(Photo: Brendan Badfield/WCSN)
Friday night, Westwood paid witness to a vengeful performance by the UCLA Bruins (21-4, Pac-12 14-3).
After suffering a reverse sweep at the hands of Arizona State (14-14, Pac-12 7-10) in their first matchup back in October, the Bruins refused to relinquish the momentum generated from their steal of the first frame.
Over half of the set was touch-and-go for both sides. Neither the Sun Devils nor the Bruins could find separation, with both squads seeing substantial offensive success.
Eighteen of the opening game’s first 27 points were registered as kills.
Accounting for 11 of these 18, UCLA managed quite an ideal balance in their offensive attack early on.
6-foot-5 redshirt sophomore middle Anna Dodson found fast opportunities to help the Bruins, collecting an impressive tally of four kills. Following the efforts of the towering youngster was head coach Michael Sealy’s veteran leader and go-to hitter, graduate student outside hitter Mac May, who downed three balls of her own.
Aside from those two, three other players would manage to chip in a kill or two to prop up UCLA’s phenomenal kill count after just 13 points. Considering they’d finish with a total of 44 in the category, the conference leader wasted no time getting settled offensively.
For ASU, its contribution was a lesser seven kills, but the nature under which these points were registered communicated its true significance. Junior outside Iman Isanovic, sophomore opposite Marta Levinska, sophomore middle Claire Jeter and freshman outside Geli Cyr were each involved in this early action at Pauley Pavilion.
Judging from the box score and overall play in the Sun Devils’ prior contest with the Bruins, getting the most out of Isanovic, Levinska, Jeter and Cyr was likely a point of emphasis for head coach Sanja Tomasevic’s offensive game plan heading into the rematch. Against the Bruins the first time around, these four main attackers thrived within the Sun Devil offense, each reaching double-figure kills.
However, serving as quite the ominous trend, the last time Tomasevic and company got 10-plus kills from the aforementioned players was way back on Oct. 24 against Colorado.
As such, having each of them establish a collective flow with sophomore setter Ella Snyder at the beginning stages of the first was crucial. With tight competition characterizing the first part of the opening set, chunk points defined the second part. Once the score read 14-13 Sun Devils, the floodgates to sporadic one-sided play were unleashed.
With help from the opposition, Arizona State would take six of the next nine available points.
Unsurprisingly, Isanovic had a hand in the run, swinging for two points and walling up for a block assist alongside sophomore middle Claudia Stahlke. But the Bruins essentially handed away points to propel Tomasevic and company to a 20-16 spot.
UCLA’s May and senior opposite élan McCall combined for three unforced errors, stumbling into blunders on two attacks and one serve.
Just five points away from going up a set and establishing a confident tone for the remainder of the match, the Sun Devils would refrain from getting even two points closer to the magic number. It was the Bruins’ turn to run.
May and company would go on to win nine of the final 10 points of the frame.
To start, the three points by error reaped earlier by Arizona State were virtually refunded right back to UCLA. The involved players were notables, as Isanovic, Levinska and Cyr repackaged errors by serve and attack, gifting it to the Bruins. The free points would kickstart a wave of momentum for the host team that would carry them through to the winner’s circle in the initial set.
UCLA 1-0.
As the second set proceeded forward, it was as if the Sun Devils had forgotten their collapse in the prior set’s closing moments. To their credit, Tomasevic’s gritty group came out and competed just as they did before, shaping a frame that observed 14 ties and five lead changes.
But this wouldn’t matter in the end. ASU’s proven capacity to play the Bruins tight for mere portions of the set would not deliver them the necessary plays to take victories in crunch time.
In the heart of the frame, Arizona State held the slight advantage, 16-15, fueled by a spread of kills shared amongst their usual suspects.
Then déjà vu struck.
This time led by the efforts of sophomore opposite Allison Jacobs and Dodson, UCLA scratched out 10 of the next 12 points, taking yet another set off a prolonged scoring run.
UCLA 2-0.
Jacobs, who hit a negative percentage on just nine attempts in her team’s first match against the Sun Devils, stepped into an elevated role in the absence of freshman outside Charitie Luper and took advantage. Adding two timely kills and aces, Jacobs made her presence felt in the high-pressure moments of the second frame and overall delivered quite the complimentary performance to May with three service aces and nine kills at a solid .286 clip.
In fact, the same should also be said for Dodson, who finished the outing with 10 kills and just one error on a whopping .600 hitting percentage.
Though you could say May put forth greater efficiency in her offensive performance compared to Isanovic, both contributed as the offensive leads they’ve served as for the entire year. In this case, the offensive outputs of their supporting casts would be the X-factor.
In the October match, Levinska, Cyr, and Jeter outhit the Bruins’ secondary attackers in Luper and Dodson by measurements of both frequency and efficiency, resulting in an ASU win.
Friday night, Jacobs and Dobson outhit Levinska, Cyr, and Jeter by the same measurements, and thus UCLA won.
The secondary offenses seem to have well encompassed the 2021 regular season series between the Sun Devils and the Bruins.
If you’re wondering how the third and final set of UCLA’s sweep went, recall the general sequences underlying the first two frames. A similar trend continued in the third set.
Swift back-and-forth play brought the Sun Devils to an 18-17 lead, setting up another monstrous scoring run centered around yet another different player of the Bruins’ supporting cast: McCall, a player that didn’t hit very well all match but turned in three consecutive kills in the clutch.
UCLA 3-0.
The Bruins’ sweep wasn’t wholly dominant. Tomasevic’s Sun Devils put up a fight, just not one that sustained over the course of a full set.
What proved important was the production of Isanovic and May’s supporting cast along with the timely late-set performances already mentioned. Levinska, Cyr and Jeter combined for a measly 15 kills. Dodson, Jacobs and McCall combined for a higher and more efficient 25 kills.
